Indonesia’s new health minister, Buddy, said on the 29th that the Indonesian government is about to complete the agreement to order a coronavirus vaccine from the American pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer and AstraZeneca in the United Kingdom.
According to Reuters, Buddy said that Indonesia will order 50 million doses of vaccine from Pfizer and AstraZeneca respectively. The agreement with AstraZeneca will be finalized by the end of this month, and the agreement with Pfizer will be signed in the first week of January 2021.
“They are the most important group in the fight against this pandemic,” Boudie said, who will be the first to get the first coronavirus vaccine. AstraZeneca vaccine is expected to arrive in Indonesia in the second quarter of 2021, and the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine will arrive in the third quarter.
Indonesia is the country with the worst epidemic in Southeast Asia. Real-time statistics from Worldometer show that Indonesia has so far more than 710,000 confirmed cases and more than 21,000 deaths. The former Indonesian Minister of Health Travan was accused of ineffective response to the epidemic and was replaced by President Joko on December 22.
